Olympic Athletes Are Living Green

by Angela, THE SUSTAINABLE SCRIBE

The Millennium Water development on the south bank of False Creek is a 1,100-unit housing project development that will serve as Vancouver’s Olympic athletes’ village, will certainly be environmentally sustainable, design manager Roger Bayley assures.

The development’s living green initiatives will include:

• A “district energy system” that will sop up residual heat from city sewer pipes to warm water feeding the vein-like capillaries in the development’s ceiling-mounted radiant heating system. Also, in the summer, those same capillary- mat panels can reverse, running cool water, to draw the heat out of homes.
• Buildings in the development will feature wider, naturally lit and ventilated corridors and thicker, more deeply insulated exterior walls, and exterior, automatic shading to keep units naturally cool in strong sunshine.
• Unseen, drains will siphon rainwater falling on the project’s buildings into basement cisterns that will irrigate its green roofs and gardens in the summer and be enough to flush its toilets in the fall and winter.[Read rest of story]